HOMEWARD BOUND
A littleprocession of housewives arrives at the town hall late at night. I see them through the chinks of the door from the room where I lie. “We have given our all to the troops,” they say, “we have nothing to eat.”
“Nothing to eat.” So the Germanhaus-fraucan be just as compassionate as the Belgian peasant. I go to sleep in a comfortable bed, locked-in prisoner though I am, and dream sweeter dreams than I ever enjoyed in the little Ardennois village.
At four in the morning I am told to get up. My door is unlocked and I am taken to the dining-room where the kind Bourgmestre’s wife gives me breakfast. Her husband is in uniform. After surrendering me to the authorities at Cologne he will rejoin his regiment. The wife speaks to me with tears running down her cheeks as if I were an old friend. “It is so hard, so very hard, Fräulein, that he must go. What will happen to me and my three little ones?”
On the just or the unjust side, in war as in life, it is always the woman who pays....
The twelve-hour journey to Cologne is uneventful. The Bourgmestre’s manner has quite changed to me to-day. He is almost friendly. He puts me on myparole d’honneurif he leaves the carriage for a moment. Needless to say I do not run away. Many people travel with us, mostly men. They talk of brutal treatment accorded them by the French when escaping from that country at the beginning of the war. Some speak scornfully of the English. The Bourgmestre leans across and says quietly: “I think you do not notice that we have an English lady in the carriage.” There are instant apologies and smiles all round. I begin to feel safe.
Cologne at last! The Bourgmestre delivers me up, suit-case and all, to the Bahnhof Commandant. I say good-bye, thank him gratefully and wish him luck. My escape from death is entirely due to his and Col. ——’s kind influence. The Cologne Commandant questions me a little; another official asks me if I know a friend of his at “Tweekenham.” I am delivered up into the hands of a brow-beating policeman who makes me follow him through the traffic like a little dog.Finally he stalks majestically into the hall of the Hôtel Kron Prinz, and, with a parting “you are free,” leaves me to my own devices.
Free! Glorious word. I have not had a bath for three weeks, nor a good square meal for the same period. I toss up which shall come first. Bath wins. It is followed by a delicious dinner. The waiter brings me theKoelnische Zeitungand points out an illuminating article on the iniquities of England headed: “Das Perfide Albion.”
After dinner I walk through the streets to thePolizei. Cologne is a place you can get into with luck. But it owns a governor to be propitiated if you wish to escape therefrom. I arrange for papers to be signed. As I return late editions announcing German victories are being sold by little girls all down the street.
The hotel manager tells me several English families lately staying at the hotel have expressed their indignation with England for having declared war!
I am up at an early hour and off to thePolizei, then the American Consulate and back again. I feel I must get away before they rearrest me. The Consulate is brusque. A young man in a khaki-coloured coat says impressivelythat he is not sure about the passport. They have had a wire this morning.... Something sticks in my throat and forbids me to ask the wording of that wire. I hold out my Lloyd’s bank-book and my visiting-card and I say I will wait until I see the Consul. Days, weeks, months, are nothing to me. I can remain there for ever with perfect equanimity. They begin to fear that I will. Presently I am shown to the Consul’s room. He looks at me severely as I open my little nest of papers.
“Very well,” he says; “but how am I to know you are the person you claim to be?”
Apparently the only successful way to establish identity is to have one’s name branded on one’s forehead.
For the first time, I burst into tears. England seems slipping away. I can hear the Tax-collector once more, as he leans across the table and says in his kindly, serious way, “You will never see England again, Mademoiselle, make up your mind to that,” following on the words of the Brandenburger Cuirassier, “You are in more danger than my brother in Russia.”
The Consul ultimately accepts my word. He is kindness itself, and even says he will come tomy aid in the event of my being rearrested on the homeward journey.
I leave the Hôtel Kron Prinz and wait outside the station for two hours before the train is due to leave. I fight literally and fearfully for—not a seat—but just standing-room. My first-class ticket procures me a few inches of space in a first-class corridor where the squash is so great that the surrounding faces touch mine and I cannot move hand or foot. There are fifteen people in each compartment. The corridors even are so full that men and women are standing in the lavatories. The order is given to close the windows while we go over the Rhine. I remember nothing more until I come to with my back against the wall and my mouth sweet with the delicious odour and purifying feel of peppermint. A kind German is popping little peppermint comfits into my mouth. Blessed Teuton! We travel like that for hours. It seems days. We have leisure to study the methods of the army of men working at the fortifications outside Cologne. The express pants along at a walking pace for a few miles, stops at a wayside station and fat market women fight their way in and stick their bulging baskets—faute de mieux—on our heads. One woman gets wedgedin the lavatory door, adding suffocation to the other trials of the poor souls within. We arrive at Duisburg. The train will stop here seven hours. Seven minutes I had understood previously. I alight. The peppermint-providing Teuton and a charming German girl who has been already forty-seven hours on the journey, take me in tow. We wander through the town, we enjoy cream-laden chocolate, ice in a café, we speak of anything and everything except the war.
At the station we admire the wonderful organisation of the Red Cross. Then we dine together. An obsequious waiter brings the menu—in French. A storm-cloud gathers on the faces of my two companions.
“Take it away. We don’t speak French any more,” he says roughly. We are reduced to Wienerschnitzel and beer. I dislike both. The train comes in bringing German wounded, all pale and very silent except one who is able to stand on the platform and becomes instantly the centre of a thrilled audience.
I offer my fruit to the silent, white-faced men who are making shift to find comfort on the hard cushions. “Why not?” says one indifferently reaching out his hand for the purple grapes. Theothers stare at me but are seemingly past interest.
The train starts. Our first-class compartment is as full as before, but instead of the beating sun, a blessed coolness has come to us with the darkness. My German friend meets her mother at Wesel. They all implore me to stay the night with them ... as many nights as I like. I am touched but must get on. I may yet be stopped on the frontier. Two soldiers, bayonets fixed, descend on me and demand papers. For the moment I have mislaid them. A crowd collects. Spy-baiting is always fun.
There is decided depression when I produce my passport and the Commandant’s papers. They let me pass. I enter the train for Goch and a talkative guard comes to keep me company. He was in charge of the train which has brought many prisoners through—thousands of French and only two English so far. “And very glad the French are to be here out of the fighting. They were all laughing as they came by,” he says.
At Goch I fall out. I can afford to sleep here, since I am in safety. And sleep I do in a small wayside hotel.
Little old ladies regale me at breakfast withtales of “hideous Belgian atrocities.” I catch a train to Flushing.
I hold in my lap all the way a French lady of eighty-six, who has already been seven days in the train. I am desperately afraid she will die in my arms. The rest of the carriage is filled with Japanese fleeing from Germany after their declaration of war. For once I bless their smallness of stature. They curl themselves up on the floor, in corners, on hand-bags. I am sure if need be they would travel quite contented in the rack. I notice their only European language is German. When I address them in French and English they cannot understand.
I get on the boat at Flushing. It all seems too good to be true. Two ladies plump down beside me and tell of their “terrible adventures,” in leaving Germany. These harrowing tales resolve themselves into the loss of some pretty frocks. It suddenly occurs to me that I too have lost all my clothes.
Somehow the war had seemed more important!
The deck is a struggling mass of complacent Americans. The Japanese are so small as to be overlooked. I am the only Britisher.
The Yankees survey our greyhound cruisersthrough their lorgnettes with disrespectful enthusiasm and guess they’re “just sweet.” They are enjoying the war with a delightful air of detachment. I envy them. Even the thought of mines does not disturb their equanimity. American subjects exploded by a mine. Impossible!
We arrive at Folkestone. Passports must be shown. Well-dressed Americans crowd the companion-ways into the saloon. Men and women, dressing-cases, floating veils. In between lurk the Japanese like faithful little dogs. Meekly I wait last.
A stentorian voice roars out from the saloon.
“British subjects first.” My paltry triumph comes. I step briskly forward and lay my passport before the purser’s critical eyes.
A moment later I fall ashore, almost into the arms of a stalwart British bobby. Dear sweet soul. I could have kissed him.
London again. A hot bath, a good meal, a deep, sound sleep to the hum of Piccadilly traffic, and I am ready to help. War is barbarous, horrible, but there is a sturdy realism about it which is lacking in our slug-slim, civilised life.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH